Tsubasa Kato (born in Japan in 1984) is a Seattle-based contemporary artist.
His exhibitions incorporate elements of structural sculpture, film and photography from the context of his communal, praxis-oriented projects. After graduating with an MFA from the Tokyo University of Arts, Kato has worked in a variety of rural and urban environments across the globe.
His representative work is the “Pull and Raise” project, in which spontaneously formed groups work together to pull down large-scale structures with ropes. This work challenges us to see each project site's environment as a narrative reflected in the shape and the weight of the structure. By employing communal action to pull and manipulate this structure, he represents the social order in terms of an alterable, physical form-- in other words, provides a platform for people to spontaneously and unconsciously cooperate in order to envision change.
Through the use of two overlapping layers —praxis and documentary— in the exhibition, he exposes the tensions between the “self” and the “other” -“them” and “us” when examined on a larger scale.

(Drawing) Fractions of the Longest Distance

On the flight back to the US from a project in Vietnam, I had an idea for my next work. It felt urgent ─ as
soon as I got off of the plane and through customs, I made a call on Messenger while waiting for my baggage. A
Vietnamese friend who had just seen me off in Hanoi after helping for the duration of my stay picked up. This
contraction of distance between the site and the artist is a defining characteristic of contemporary art: even
after a project’s finished, you can stay in touch with the people who assisted, no matter where you are, or
what time it is. In this way, the relationship between the site and the artist, including such friendships, is
endlessly renewed ─ even if you call a “work” complete, perhaps the underlying project remains perpetually
unfinished. On a larger scale, countless multi-national collectives are allowed to form through these
relationships accrued and renewed in the process of creating work in a variety of contexts and locations. They
offer an invaluable base to the artist, particularly for those who do collaborative projects like me.
During my stay in the US, starting in 2015, I unexpectedly experienced the whole of the last presidential
election. As is well known, this year saw the rise of a president who pledges to build a wall on the Mexican-US
border. Here are his 2015 words: “I would build a great wall, and nobody builds walls better than me, believe
me,” (from
“Here’s Donald Trump’s Presidential Announcement Speech” Time, Jun. 16. 2015)
Xenophobia, anti-globalism, and protectionism informed his campaign rhetoric; all of these point to the
strengthening of national consciousness and boundaries. In this sense, Trump’ s ascent marks a watershed moment
in the anti-globalist reaction to globalism’s advocating the free flow and exchange of products, money and
people. Of course, this tension isn’t limited to the US alone― it’s in the other sites of this exhibition’s
projects as well, that is Mexico, Indonesia, and Vietnam. Fear of the outside coming in (and the changes that
accompany its arrival) affects everyone: those who are free to move or who must move, and those who won’ t or
can’t move. Or, if the outside’s already entered, its effects are often painful. My point here isn’t that
globalism has gone too far, or that anti-globalism is ridiculous―rather, I created this exhibition with an eye
on the ways in which the basic structures of community are being shaken and reshaped by movement.

Between Bystanders and the Impacted

How are we to look at what lies beyond our directly experienced and limited realities? Through the
informatization of society that followed the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, we are now made aware of the
“other” to a historically unprecedented extent. I held the delusion that society, through this change, would
fragment into decentralized communities that recognized each other’s differences. But instead, we face a US
president who calls for building walls on borders despite the lessons posed by 9/11, the Iraq War, the November
2015 Paris attacks, and the war in Syria. The same communal categories of oldーreligion, skin color,
languageーstill separate “this” side and “that” side today.

“The new communication technologies, which hold out the promise of a new democracy and a new social
equality, have in fact created new lines of inequality and exclusion, both within the dominant countries and
especially outside them”ー“Empire” Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri

We can’t directly experience the stories and events that make up outside realities. What is needed now is not
simply the passive reception of information, but a way of imagining those realities that lie beyond our
immediate perception.
The exhibition is a book whose pages are turned by the whole body. Unlike a movie theater, viewers in an art
gallery must move to view each of the works. This action is dynamic and switches “on” the imagination. The
artists whose works I reference, including Beuys, Smithson, Alys, Gonzalez Torres and Sehgal, challenge the
viewer to question her immediate reality, instead directing her imagination outside of the museum, and to the
“other” present inside the museum.

“They have to contend with areas that are not really based on the kind of representations that
they’re familiar with, like objects in galleries or paintings on walls. In other words, they have to contend
with the physical landscape rather than the insularity of a white room.”ーRobert Smithson
“What I try to do really is to spread stories, to generate situations that can provoke through their
experience a sudden unexpected distancing from the immediate situation and can shake up your assumptions
about the way things are”ーFrancis Alys

Strategies that cause the viewer to physically move and lead the imagination towards outside realities and the
“other” are most effective in information societies.
On the other hand, voluntary and improvisational types of group-based activities, such as the carrying of
Omikoshi and jazz, can only be accomplished through communicationーthat is, directing participants’ imaginations
to the “other”. In order to support the weight of an Omikoshi, 30 to 40 carriers must voluntarily and randomly
relieve each other in turns. Members of a jazz band alternate in improvising over a shared rhythm. Physical
mediums and group efforts, in short, structures supported by groups, require voluntary or improvisational
actions that make the group dynamic.

My work derives from these two vantage points, in other words, strategies that invite the viewer’s imagination
to outside realities and the “other”, and voluntary or improvisational group activities brought about by
participants imagining the “other”. Ultimately, the only way to unite these two approaches is through the
accidental and poetic visual. The imagination directed to the “other” through voluntary and spontaneous group
activities is condensed and universalized through documentation/representation in an art work, and then
restored by the imagination of the viewer in the exhibition acting upon this work. Art that moves people across
temporal, spatial and contextual boundaries is beautiful precisely because we can’t know the realities that lie
beyond; it is this beauty that drives me to create.

“This process of coming to see other human beings as "one of us" rather than as "them" is a matter
of redescription of what we ourselves are like.”ー“Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity” Richard Rorty

If, while waiting for my food at a restaurant, I learned that a family member or friend had died, or, if the
person next to me was suddenly shot and killed, I would lose my appetite for whatever was placed in front of me
afterwards. But, I eat today knowing very well that people on the other side of the planet are dying. Through
imagining the realities beyond us, we can form groups that transcend pre-existing boundaries. This in turn
changes our perception of other communities and impacted groups around the world; our own identities are remade
in the process.